Nearly 200 business owners and community leaders attended a Workers Compensation Symposium at John A. Logan College.
Southern Illinois Healthcare hosted Thursday's event.
SIH's Verlinda Henshaw says this can be a large expense for businesses. She says some are not taking advantage of some of the cost-savings stemming from the workers comp reforms approved in 2011.
"A lot of employers still do not understand what those changes were and what the opportunities that new act in 2011 - and I say new because again it's really a lack of understanding what those opportunities are and the law that will allow them to reduce their costs."
Henshaw says employers have been slow to act on these new measures in part because the Illinois Department of Insurance and Workers Compensation Commission didn't publish the new rules and regulations in a timely manner.
Gail Lannom is President of Priority Staffing Group in Marion. She says her question is where are the proposed savings for employers going from the 2011 reforms?
"It's not coming back to the employers at this point, nothing that can be visibly seen at least. The rates are still the rates. They're not going down."
Lannom staffs 14 workers within her office and has sent more than 200 to other businesses in the region. She says most employers agree workers comp rates in Illinois are too high, which is causing jobs to leave the state.
The psychological overlap with pain and injury on the job is something the medical community needs to address more effectively.
That was one of the main messages from the keynote speaker at the symposium.
Dr. James Atchison is the medical director of the Center for Pain Management at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. He says many workers get injured on the job, heal up and go back to work without much trouble. But, Atchison says some people don't.
"They start to have multiple challenges within the medical system, the legal system, work comp is one component of that system. So, you add another layer and we throw in insurance companies and nurse managers and everything else. So, that person gets overwhelmed."
Atchison says recognizing who won't do well early on is a key to helping get these workers back on the job more quickly by preventing them from lingering in the system for an extended period. He says this could be a win for all parties by cutting down on medical and legal expenses.
